Aunty Had a Stroke
#6
Hey RiverNotch,

I just saw your review of this. Thanks for taking a look.

Some would consider your remarks as just an egoistic display of pretentious bullshit,

but not me, I am grateful to be guided by your professional insights.

Cheers







(12-10-2016, 02:24 PM)RiverNotch Wrote:  
(12-07-2016, 06:27 AM)Sparkydashforth Wrote:  Both the lack of punctuation and the first line capitalization don't help. The thoughts and emotions in this, I feel, would be better defined by punctuation, and modernity of the sort never hurt anyone. Right now, though, it's a little unfocused -- I can't really take it seriously without playing with it altered. And so:

Her body slipped sideways -- The em dash here makes it breathless -- a period would produce a thud. But nothing, and the image just slides clumsily into the next.
stayed there.

She gurgled as if she were
reciting a love poem
through a storm drain -- I've no real love for these three lines -- all the meat could be compressed into two, even one line, and there's a certain vanity to "reciting a love poem" that feels inappropriate to the piece. Also, if you keep the next lines as fragments, instead of a full stop, perhaps an em dash, but I've altered the next.

never complained,
nor did she forgive. I think the lack of parallelism here damages the presentation. A certain tone is developed by the parallelism that just makes the whole thing thud, makes it seem more matter-of-the-whole-truth instead of an awkward mix of facts. I'd prefer "never complained, / never forgave."

She plowed her mind The first thing I thought of here was agriculture -- plowed the mind, sowed seeds of thought. But burning rubber makes it clear that this is supposed to be about vehicles, so it doesn't really work -- something else, perhaps.
ahead of her wheelchair,
gray hair electrified But then this breaks the car metaphor. 
with aftershocks This too. Well, what a hodgepodge -- for these last two stanzas, you really need to compress.

burning rubber all the way. And this just sounds like a shot into some weird granny road trip movie, instead of the sort of outward movement your tone here seems to want. Again, need to reword, to compress.

Eh, this was kind of a fplumpf for me. Not visceral or delicate or intricate enough to really evoke a reaction from me, especially with the punctuation-capitalization exuding a certain lack of professionalism. 
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Messages In This Thread
Aunty Had a Stroke - by Sparkydashforth - 12-07-2016, 06:27 AM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by kolemath - 12-07-2016, 09:08 AM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by Sparkydashforth - 12-08-2016, 07:36 AM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by Missy - 12-08-2016, 07:01 AM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by RiverNotch - 12-10-2016, 02:24 PM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by Sparkydashforth - 12-11-2016, 07:54 AM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by Achebe - 12-11-2016, 09:05 AM
RE: Aunty Had a Stroke - by Sparkydashforth - 12-11-2016, 09:39 AM



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